1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image matching method for matching two blood vessel images, fingerprint images, still images, moving images, and other images based on linear components in the images, and a program and an image matching system for the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as systems for matching image information, various image matching systems are known. For example, an information processing apparatus for comparing for example a registered image against an image for comparison, that is, a “match image”, in a predetermined positional relationship to calculate correlation values and matching a registered image against the match image based on the correlation values or an information processing apparatus generating correlation values by processing in units of pixels are known (refer to for example Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-194862).
In the above information processing apparatuses, however, when parallel movement, rotation, enlargement, reduction, or other offset occurs between a registered image and the match image, it is difficult to suitably generate the correlation values, so sufficient matching precision is sometimes not obtained. Consequently, improvement is demanded.